ng current, and was hurried away.

This appalling incident silenced all who saw it for a moment. Then they
began to wail louder than ever.

But Little started to his feet, and cried "Hurrah!"

There was a general groan.

"Hold your tongues," he roared. "I've got good news for you. The water
was over the top windows; now it is an inch lower. The reservoir must be
empty by now. The water will go down as fast as it rose. Keep quiet for
two minutes, and you will see."

Then no more was heard but the whimpering of the women, and, every now
and then, the voice of Little; he hung over the parapet, and reported
every half-minute the decline of the water; it subsided with strange
rapidity, as he had foreseen.

In three minutes after he had noticed the first decline, he took Grace
down through the roof, on the second floor.

When Grace and Henry got there, they started with dismay: the danger
was not over: the front wall was blown clean out by the water; all but
a jagged piece shaped like a crescent, and it seemed a miracle that the
roof, thus weakened and crowded with human beings, had not fallen in.

"We must get out of this," said Little. "It all hangs together by a
thread."

He called the others down from the roof, and tried to get down by the
staircase, but it was broken into sections and floating about. Then he
cut into the floor near the wall, and, to his infinite surprise, found
the first floor within four feet of him. The flood had lifted it bodily
more than six feet.

He dropped on to it, and made Grace let herself down to him, he holding
her round the waist, and landing her light as a feather.

Henry then hacked through the door, which was jammed tight; and,
the water subsiding, presently the wrecks of the staircase left off
floating, and stuck in the mud and water: by this means they managed
to get down, and found themselves in a layer of mud, and stones, and
debris, alive and dead, such as no imagination had hitherto conceived.

Dreading, however, to remain in a house so disemboweled within, and so
shattered without, that it seemed to survive by mere cohesion of mortar,
he begged Grace to put her arm round his neck, and then lifted her and
carried her out into the night.

"Take me home to papa, my angel," said she.

He said he would; and tried to find his way to the road which he knew
led up the hill to Woodbine Villa. But all landmarks were gone; houses,
trees, hedges, all swept away; roads covered